Rough Sailing For Navy Women

July 26, 1992|By JON HILKEVITCH Chicago Tribune

ABOARD THE USS JOHN F. KENNEDY — Lt. Vicki Peterson sat at a table in a below-decks wardroom on this aircraft carrier one sunny morning last week surrounded by about 15 fellow officers, all of them men.

Even this far from the action on the flight deck, the thunder and deep, throaty roar of F-14 Tomcats being catapulted into the cobalt-blue Caribbean sky could be heard as well as felt.

More than 100 pilots and their support crews - again, all men - were conducting training operations for the deck of the Norfolk-based ship, launching and tailhook-trapping warplanes on a wind-blown day about 100 miles off the coast of Puerto Rico.

Peterson, a pilot in her mid-20s who has been in the Navy eight years, was one of only about 10 women on this gigantic carrier, which is home to more than 5,000 men.

And only a couple of the women aboard were Navy; the rest were with a visiting presidential commission that is studying whether to recommend dramatic changes in the role of women in the military.

Reforms the commission might recommend to Congress by its November deadline could include allowing women into combat, and, in the process, removing the glass ceiling that lack of battlefield experience has on any military career. President Bush has pledged to go along with whatever the commission recommends.

From on-board testimony before the commission and in interviews, it's clear that most of the men on the JFK believe - like it or not - that women soon would be serving alongside them aboard ship and in the air.

After decades of debate on the issue, some still don't like it.

``If women came aboard this ship, say tomorrow, I would have a problem with my men focusing on what they need to do,'' said Samuel Long, a chief in the air division. ``They aren't used to women on a flight deck. Lives will be in jeopardy.''

And although Peterson eagerly seeks the same opportunities available to her male counterparts, she nodded in agreement time after time when they complained about the difficulties that have arisen since the Navy blazed ahead of the other armed services in more fully integrating women into non-combat operations.

Among these are sexual affairs and sexual harrassment, women reassigned because of pregnancy and leaving units understaffed, single mothers having no one to handle emergencies at home and wives who are opposed to women at sea stopping their husbands from re-enlisting.

Peterson was the first to say that ``women in the military should not be looked at as an equal-opportunity issue, but on the basis of combat readiness.''

She asked for a level playing field - no favors for women, just a chance for women to serve on combatant aircraft or vessels permanently in order to prove their abilities and their bravery.

``I've got women in my unit fully capable of flying A-6s,'' Peterson said, referring to the attack bomber that during the Persian Gulf War delivered weapons deep into hostile territory.

At the commission's earlier hearings in Washington and Chicago, most of the servicewomen who appeared expressed strong doubts that the military would significantly open up opportunities for them anytime soon.

At issue is a web of concerns that range from the effects of mixed-gender units on combat readiness to the reaction of spouses back home.

Servicewomen are currently assigned only temporarily on aircraft or ships that, like the JFK, are considered combatants, and only when the planes or vessels are conducting training operations.

This bars them from the all-important six-month maneuvers at sea and, of course, going off to fight a war.

One after another male officers voiced concern to commission members that women wouldn't be able to perform as well as male professional soldiers on board and that the men would have to pick up the slack.

Some also predicted that women would be given special bunk and bathroom privileges - a situation they said would cause near-mutiny among sailors packed into bare-bones quarters with only eight showers for each 120 bunks.

And they pointed out that it would be nearly impossible to create any privacy for women on a floating city like the Kennedy. In some staterooms, bunk areas are cut in half by public corridors through which people - even cooks carrying tubs of food - must pass regularly.

In addition to a berth, which comes with a rock-hard mattress and a blue curtain that affords limited seclusion, each sailor is assigned a small locker to keep all his worldly goods. And that's all.

The men grew especially agitated when the subject turned to past situations, either on shore or other vessels, in which a woman became pregnant and then went on medical disability, leaving the work detail short-staffed.

At a separate session with senior officers, Cmdr. Rob Nelson of the JFK's F/A-18 Gunslingers squadron told the presidential commission: